The Mission of the University: Intellectual Discovery or Social Transformation? John R. Searle Faditor’s Note: This article (together with Professor Aaron Wildavsky’s preceding essay) is based on remarks given at the NAS convention in April 1993. Some of these themes are developed at greater length in three other articles by Professor Searle: “The Storm Over the University,” in The New York Review of Books (6 December 1990); “Rationality and Realism, What's at Stake?”, in Daedalus (Fall 1993); and “Is There a Crisis in American Higher Education?” in The Partisan Review (Fall 1993) he title of this essay articulates a distinction that is growing in the univer- sities, particularly in the humanities. We are, in effect, developing two faculty subcultures within the university, one might even say two sub- universities within the university. I would not wish to exaggerate this distinc- tion. The dividing line between the two universities is not sharp but, it is, nonetheless, there. We lack at present a neutral vocabulary for describing the difference be- tween these two university subcultures. The first we might describe as the university of traditional research and teaching; the second contains a variety of points of view, but we might say, collectively, that most of the adherents of these points of view are engaged in the discourse of postmodernism. Since, as T said, I do not have a neutral vocabulary, I will just use these two items of Jargon—“the traditional university” and “the postmodern university.” The postmodern university, as I am using this expression, exists in certain hu- manities departments, particularly in those concerned with the study of litera- ture; it has also spread into some social science departments and even into a few law schools. As far as I know, it has no influence whatever in departments of natural science or engineering. It has had very little impact on the major departments of philosophy in the United States, though it is based on certain trends in contemporary philosophy, particularly continental European p losophy. In order to understand these two university subcultures and the two con- ceptions of higher education that they express, it is essential to understand first something of their philosophical underpinnings. Universities are, as you all know, medieval inventions. They were founded upon a certain set of metaphysical assumptions. A great deal in the current assaults on the tradi- tional conception of the university rests on a rejection of many of these John R. Searle is Mills Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Language at the Univer- sity of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720.Searle 81 assumptions and especially on a rejection of a certain traditional conception of knowledge, truth, reality, and objectivity. People of an older generation who are committed to the traditional con- ception of the university take the traditional conception so much for granted that they find it difficult even to articulate it as a set of propositions. It is more like the air they breathe, something that it is hardly possible for them to notice. In this article I want to try to articulate some of the basic propositions behind the traditional conception of the university. These propositions to- gether form what might be called the “Western Rationalistic Tradition,” and I will now attempt to articulate a few of the many propositions that are central to it. It is important to do this in this discussion, because the postmodern conception of the university depends in various ways on a rejection of the Western Rationalistic Tradition. I apologize for the brevity and the superfici- ality of what I am about to say, but one does not explain two thousand years of Western philosophy in five minutes without having to do a certain amount of summarizing. First, it is the basic assumption of the Western Rationalistic Tradition that reality exists independently of our representations of it. ‘A second principle, connected to the first, is that language is often used to represent features of reality, features that exist independently of us and of language; and, on occasion at least, language can be used to communicate meanings from speakers to hearers. It is essential to the Western Rationalistic Tradition that we regard clarity as desirable and obscurity as undesirable. In clear utterances we get across a meaning we are trying to communicate, and one of the functions of that meaning is to enable our words to refer to a reality that exists independently of anyone’s representation. ‘A third principle of the Western Rationalistic Tradition is that truth is a matter of accuracy of representation. Our utterances, beliefs, judgments, etc., are used to represent an independently existing reality, and to the extent that we succeed or fail in doing that, what we believe, state, or judge is true or false, respectively. A fourth principle is that knowledge is objective. This has the consequence that claims to knowledge have to stand or fall on their own. The point of view of the maker of the knowledge claim, the techniques that he may have used to arrive at the knowledge claim, are all of some interest, but they do not affect the truth or falsity of the claim. This is why in the traditional university we are not impressed by ad hominem arguments or by the genetic fallacy. Finally, a fifth point: it is basic to the Western Rationalistic Tradition that rationality and logic are formal. They apply across subject matters and enable rational inferential processes to move from truth to truth, from evidence to hypothesis to support or confirmation or disconfirmation, without regard to Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reseved.82 Academic Questions / Winter 1993-94 the specific content of the claims being made and without regard to the motivations of the maker. Now, if one accepts this conception of the Western Rationalistic Tradition, even in the cursory form in which I have tried to describe it, then it seems to have very clear consequences for higher education. In fact, we have built the entire university system on the proposition that we are engaged in a search for truth, that this truth concerns a reality that exists independently of our particular motivations and prejudices, that the knowledge claims that we make are objectively testable by standards of rationality, and that claims to knowledge, if substantiated, will stand on their own. I think it is obvious how this conception of knowledge and rationality underlies our conception of the natural sciences, but I think it is also funda- menial to our conception of the humanities and the social sciences. It might seem that it does not apply to the study of fictional literature, but a closer inspection reveals that it actually does apply. We do believe that there are objective—or at least intersubjective—standards for judging literary works. In the traditional university, for example, we think that we teach Shakespeare rather than Bugs Bunny, not simply because it is traditional to do so, but we think that we can actually demonstrate that Shakespeare is of a superior intellectual quality to Bugs Bunny. In the traditional university we feel also that the standards of rationality, truth, intelligence, etc., that apply in nonfictional discourse can be applied indirectly to works of fiction as well. Indeed, in my childhood it was some- thing of a cliché that you could learn more about human nature from read- ing a great novelist than you could from taking many psychology courses. Nowadays, all of these principles are in varying degrees under attack and I am somewhat surprised that there has not been more attention paid to these attacks, because the political character of much of the debate that goes on in the universities about the nature of education in the humanities and social sciences in fact rests on a much deeper set of issues concerning a rejection of the traditional conception of rationality, truth, and objectivity. I became acutely aware of this when I read a pamphlet issued by the American Council of Learned Societies called “Speaking for the Humanities. ‘This pamphlet is authored by no fewer than six heads of prominent humani- ties institutes around the country. It is not necessary to quote from it at great length, but the flavor of it is conveyed by such remarks as, “Claims to objectiv- ity, disinterest, and rationality are not to be trusted.” The authors then go on to argue that claims to objectivity, disinterest, and rationality usually reflect some local historical circumstances and are generally part of some desire for empowerment, some sort of power grab. The basic message that I want to convey is that the rejection of the tradi- tional conceptions of truth, objectivity, rationality, and realism is not educa- tionally innocent. It has enormous consequences for the nature of higherSearle 83 education. Debates about the curriculum, after all, are not new in American education. We have been having debates about the curriculum ever since ‘American universities were founded. But there are two special features about the current debate that are unlike earlier attempts to reform the curriculum, First, there is a deliberate and explicit attempt to politicize the university towards a more leftwing point of view. Second, and this is really the main topic of my discussion, the left-wing ideology in question, unlike earlier left- wing movements in the United States, rests on a rejection of traditional stan- dards of rationality, truth, and objectivity. We have come a long way since Marx sneered at the utopian socialists for being unscientific. In my intellectual lifetime at least, it is a new thing that leftwing views should be advanced from an antiscientific, antirational point of view. There is, as I said, no neutral term to describe the phenomena in question, and I would not wish to give the impression that the postmodernist university articulates a unified point of view, but the various forms of deconstruction, poststructuralism, etc., are in various ways essentially antirationalist points of view. What are some of the consequences of the rejection of the Western Ratio- nalistic Tradition for higher education? Let me briefly list five or six of these consequences. First, there has been a dramatic shift from the conception of a university department as a group of people engaged in the study of a common domain to that of a group of people advancing a particular political cause. This is a dramatic shift and I am surprised that it has not been more generally noticed. The creation of a Department of Women's Studies or a Department of Ethnic Studies tends to be somewhat different from the creation of a Department of Molecular Biology, for example. The creation of molecular biology came about because of a knowledge explosion that made existing departmental arrangements inadequate to the new research development, Molecular biol- ogy grew out of virology because the subject matter got out of hand. But the creation of Departments of Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies were as much politically motivated as they were academically motivated. The purpose of the creation of these departments was not just to facilitate the study of a domain that could not be adequately studied in existing departments, but to advance a certain moral and political cause. Second, this conception of higher education has further consequences down the line in the selection of the faculty. It is basic to the Western Ratio- nalistic Tradition that you do not have to be an adherent of a specific point of view in order to do a good job teaching that point of view. You do not have to be a Marxist to teach Marx, you do not have to be a Catholic to teach Saint Thomas Aquinas, you do not have to be a Platonist to teach Plato. If we were consistent with this traditional conception of the university, then it ought to be possible for an antifeminist male to teach courses in women's studies. But Coovriaht © 2001. All Richts Reseved.Ey Academic Questions / Winter 1993-94 nowadays, we would regard that as out of the question. The very selection of the faculty in these new departments dedicated to political causes is built around rejection of the traditional academic ideal of objectivity. Faculty members are selected because they meet certain ideological, ethnic, racial, and gender criteria. A third feature I wish to notice is the decline of the distinction between high culture and popular culture. Traditionally, universities exist to advance @ certain conception of intellectual quality, But once you abandon the West- em Rationalistic Tradition, then there is no basis for making philosophical discriminations on the basis of intellectual quality. Indeed, the very enter- prise seems to be elitist and oppressive. It seems elitist to think that some books are better than others, that some civilizations have made greater contri- butions than others, etc. On the contrary, the idea is that instead of studying the “great works of the past” (the very notion seems archaic), we are studying texts, and one text is as much of a text as any other text. A fourth consequence of the revised conception of education is that repre- sentativeness now becomes crucial both in the selection of the faculty and in the selection of the curriculum. It becomes crucial that every culture should be represented and the criteria for inclusion in the curriculum are not mat- ters of intellectual quality per se, but such things as race, gender, class, and progressive attitudes that have been previously underrepresented, A fifth consequence, one that Professor Wildavsky has mentioned, so I will not say much about it, is the idea that we must have what are called “new” or “different” standards of excellence. Where the Western Rationalistic Tradi- tion is concerned, you do not have much room to maneuver when it comes to standards of excellence. Standards of intellectual quality are built into the nature of the enterprise. But when we have different sets of objectives of the enterprise, then different standards are supposed to be appropriate. The search for new criteria of excellence is of some practical importance, since if you introduce into the faculty a fairly sizable number of people who were appointed not because they met the traditional criteria, then in order that they should be reappointed, promoted, receive tenure, and receive salaries commensurate with those of the more traditional scholars, it is necessary that new criteria of excellence be designed—criteria that they can meet given their failure to meet the traditional criteria. Sixth and finally, it seems to me that a rejection of the Western Rationalis- ic Tradition has facilitated a certain redefinition of scholarship, a redefini tion of what we are trying to do as professional intellectuals in the universi- ties. This change is often described as a move towards “relativism,” but I would be more inclined to describe it as a kind of “politically committed subjectivism.” I see this as a member of the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities. We get quite a number of applications from people where it is obvious that the person wants to write a book about his or herSearle 85 reactions to, feelings about, and general “take” on the Renaissance, on the plight of minority novelists in the Pacific Northwest, on transvestites in Lon- don in the eighteenth century, etc, In all of these cases the idea is to write a politically correct set of subjective reactions to the phenomenon in question. To conclude, I would like to suggest that in our discussions of problems in higher education, these abstruse philosophical points about the nature of truth, rationality, and knowledge are not just a matter of window dressing. They are absolutely essential to understanding what is at stake. Stutamantof Owner £z Management and Sreacs soos or 38 USC 3688) ropa —— Coovriaht © 2001. All Richts Reseved.